Elise . . . Gerta huffed out a short laugh. Elise was more trouble than help these days. Nothing Gerta did made her intractable daughter happy. Quite the opposite. Everything she said was met with skepticism, doubt, or even anger. It was a classic mother-daughter stalemate. And it was exhausting. She’d have to talk to Grace about it. Idly, she wondered if Grace had the same problem with Moira. She doubted it. Moira was married now. From all she’d read, didn’t that change the nature of the mother-daughter relationship?
Gerta wrestled with those thoughts as she carried the scalding tea to her bedroom and set it on the bedside stand to cool. It was a comfortable room with a king-size bed, two big lamps for light, and an upholstered chair—and, of course, the hunting décor that adorned the rest of the cottage.
Grace loved to hunt. She found the sport of men and women in black and red coats riding behind baying hounds on the scent through crisp woodland exhilarating. Despite the dress and decorum, however, neither the hunters nor their dogs actually chased a fox anymore. Instead, the dogs followed a scented path. In Europe, foxhunting was banned in many countries—in fact, though most people didn’t realize it, Hitler had been a pioneer of hunting bans. Gerta often wondered how the Führer could consider killing foxes unsporting but not have an issue with killing fellow human Jews.
Grace’s passion for hunting was the theme of the cottage, done in a scheme of hunter green and white with splashes of red. Prints of horsemen jumping over fences on the hunt beside hounds decorated pillows, plates on the wall, and curtains. There was a fox door knocker, fox brass lamps, and a few fox figurines. When she’d first stayed at the cottage, Gerta had begged Grace to remove the stuffed fox from the living room.
Gerta found that in the equestrian world, people who hunted tended to be mad for their sport in a different way than those who pursued dressage or jumping. They took the sport home with them, relished the folklore, and were chummy with friends in the club. By contrast, the jumping world could be catty, as could the world of dressage. Competition brought out the best and the worst in people.
She was content, even happy, that Grace had found her niche in hunting. When they were young they’d both aspired to event jumping. Grace was good. Very. But she didn’t have the drive needed to excel in competition. She was too good at other things that mattered to her. By the time they were in college, she wanted to date and enjoy being a young, beautiful woman. She continued to jump, but only in local shows. She loved sponsoring events rather than jumping in them. When she met Charles at twenty-five, that was it. In her indomitable style, Grace had made him her top priority. Her life. After they married, she had put her energy and determination into his equestrian career. A few years later, her focus included Moira.
Gerta gathered her bag of supplies for her leg, then settled on the bed. She took a deep breath before beginning. It was a process she knew well. She’d gone through several models of prosthetic legs in the twenty-five years she’d worn them. The first one hadn’t been far from the wooden leg of Captain Ahab. It was like walking on a stilt. Science had come a long way since then. Now she wore a top-of-the-line leg with a microprocessor knee that had a computer and hydraulics on board, not to mention a foot that allowed her to walk with a natural gait over uneven terrain and to take stairs step over step. That had been life-changing.
Still, care of the prosthesis and the knob involved a process that required due diligence. Her German mentality and eye to perfection had kept her relatively infection-free all these years, knock on wood. She playfully knocked on the leg, though it was a far cry from wood.
She pulled back her long nightgown to reveal the black, high-tech carbon-fiber socket that enveloped the stump of her leg. She pushed the white button on its side. A soft hiss sounded as the vacuum suction was released. After that, the leg was easy to remove. She slipped it off and set it aside. Next she peeled off the liner. This cushioning material fit over her limb for comfort and to prevent chapping and blisters. Rolling it off felt a bit like removing an old-fashioned stocking—if the stocking had been made of silicone instead of silk. Guys jokingly called it the leg condom.
Gerta released a soft moan at being free. The flesh of her stump hung loose and was ribbed with scars. Each year she lost a little more of it. Tonight the skin appeared chafed and bruised. She delicately let her fingertips graze the tender skin, and winced. But she was lucky. Despite the overuse, she didn’t see any blisters. Those were the enemies. They’d keep her from using her leg until they healed. She reached for the cream in her bag, then began to massage in the anti-chafing cream, her fingernails blood red against her pale skin. Another moan escaped her lips.
The cream felt restorative but the wretched knob continued to throb. She pulled out a bottle of Vicodin and tapped two pills into her palm. She reached for the tea, cooler now, and downed the pills with a hearty swallow. Gerta closed her eyes and felt the pills slide down. Then she put away the bag and lay back on the pillows, letting the fatigue and pills do their work.
Her thoughts drifted back to Grace and their time together as young women. Grace had had the luxury of choosing to give up competitive jumping. Gerta had had that option wrenched from her unwilling hands. She no longer felt cheated or angry at God for that tragic accident—not anymore. The years had a way of rounding off the pointed edges of anger. Still, she sometimes wondered how far she might have gone if fate had allowed her to continue. She liked to think she’d have made it to the Olympics. She felt sure she would have. That had been her most cherished dream. A hard one to let go.
She’d never been as motherly as Grace. It was not in her nature. Even as girls, Grace had taken care of her friends, watched out for them, always seeming to know what Gerta needed and when, while Gerta was laser-focused on whatever competition she was preparing for. It had never occurred to her to think about what others might need—at least not during events. Gerta could be very generous with her friends. Giving to them gave her great pleasure in return. She found that being able to be generous was one of the great perks of having money to spend on causes and people she cared about. But for Grace, the giving came naturally and was a constant in her life.
That quality was probably one of the main reasons she was such a good wife and mother. Charles adored her. Gerta huffed out a short laugh. She couldn’t imagine her ex-husband, Paul, agreeing to the D or D demand. Or any demand, for that matter. After nearly twenty years of marriage, Paul had been furious at the division of property. He’d always resented her meteoric rise and felt she deserved little or nothing for not giving him a son. Gerta’s lip curled as she brought the teacup to her mouth. The misogynist . . .
Without a husband, a home, or a leg, Gerta had left Germany and fled to southeastern Florida, where friends of hers were developing a new horse community. She’d needed to get in on the ground floor of something important that she could become passionate about. And she had Elise. Together, she’d dreamed of creating in the United States a breeding stable that rivaled her ex-husband’s in Europe. In less than fifteen years, Gerta felt she’d largely succeeded in her business goal. But her dream of creating the Klug dynasty with Elise was so far failing miserably.
Gerta yawned, feeing the pain lessen and the sleepiness take hold. She couldn’t think of Elise tonight. She was too tired. Too defenseless. As the Vicodin took effect, she felt her self-control slide and she began to slip into the vortex of uncertainty. Old fears and doubts stirred in her brain to infest her heart. She curled up on her side, one knee bent closer to her chest, and drew up the blanket to tuck under her neck. Where was Elise? she worried. How were her other horses? The people who worked for her in Florida? Her home? What devastation would this hurricane bring? What would she return to in Florida?